Month: July 2013

MBA scattered across multiple campuses and across multiple schools seem to be doing better than those offered at a single campus by a single institute. Though overall Kellogg school of business is a clear winner.

Exec MBA : http://www.economist.com/whichmba/executive-mba-ranking

I found this excerpt from the economist article especially interesting:

“The joint MBA offered by Kellogg and the Hong University of Science of Technology, recipeunhealthy meanwhile, and got the top rank for the overall quality of its students. Students who enrol on this programme are particularly high-powered, earning on average $261,000 with 15 years’ work experience.”

This to me sounds like a great cohort of students and tempts me to get another MBA.

Its also interesting to look at the Full time MBA rankings at: http://www.economist.com/whichmba/full-time-mba-ranking

At #56, you will find IIM Ahmedabad, The only Indian business school in this list.

Dealing with government departments is a big part of managing a manufacturing business in India.

Our manufacturing business is neither big nor small and we get hit from all sides. Customers want reduced prices and these can’t be delivered if we comply with all government departments. Our small time competitors take greater risk, do not pay excise and that alone saves them 12.5% on costs.

Now…. We have to deal with the following departments:

Excise

ModVAT

Labour

Gratuity

PF

Income Tax

at both the factories. Both factories need a full time accountant to maintain books and manage compliance issues. This also adds costs as all departments want to be paid off on a monthly basis.

So.. the choice is to invest now in hiring this support staff and setting up controls so that we don’t falter or continue to “wing” it. I prefer the former.

Labour issues are some of the hardest to fix in India due to an antiquated systems of laws written up in the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947. To get an idea of how bad labour issues can get, one only needs to look at:

As a small manufacturing company owner, these issues give me the shivers. My years of education at some of the best schools in the country and in the US does not prepare me at all to deal with the harsh realities of the manufacturing sector in India. The Industrial Disputes Act really forces the hand of the business owner and leads to rampant corruption and under reporting of labour employed all around India. This leads even greater exploitation of labour, which is quite ironic but expected unintended consequence.

It’s one of those public policy issues that will probably never get addressed as its politically sensitive. Can’t say much more.

This Friday and Saturday, my father and I went on a business trip to Bangalore and Hyderabad. We met with two of our largest customers in Bangalore and had a bit of a sad set back to our plans for Hyderabad.

Our goal was to demonstrate our new analog and digital meters to these customer and solicit orders and feedback. I won’t bore you with the details but broadly these visits were no different than the ones I make for my current employer. The meetings were warm and frank. We spoke to the business owners rather than management representatives and we had a real personal, heart to heart chat because we have known these customers for over 15 years. The conversations included typical Hindi abuses at times, which was very different than meetings for my multinational employer. 🙂

The customers here are interested in getting more than the best product for their money and adamant about what they want and why. They move slower than customers in the US but pace of change seems similar to Japan and the UK. One of the customers was keen to experiment with new tech, the other wasn’t. Even though he is younger and more tech savvy.

We went to Hyderabad to attend the wedding of one of our dealer’s daughter. His extended family includes many of our dealers and we thought it will be good to meet all of them at once. When we got to Hyderabad we found out that our dealer’s uncle had died the night before. This was sad because this uncle had introduced us to this dealer and he was also our dealer in Chennai since 1972. My father actually cried at this news. This was very unlike any visit is ever been to for my current employer. We decided to postpone all business talks with this family until they had a chance to deal with this loss.

We met an enterprising young guy at another dealer’s shop in Hyderabad. He worked for Selec in marketing for 10+ years. He gave us great input on our strategy for digital and analog meters. This was the best conversation of the entire trip.

Like customer visits for my employer around the world, this trip was about relationships and building trust and demonstrating that we are an innovative company to our customers. It did make me question conventional wisdom, which states that relationships are the key to a successful business. You can have the best relationship with our customers but if they think you are not giving them the best price or not delivering on quality – you will be thrown out. One of 15 year customers did this to us 6 months ago. We can still go to his house and spent time with his family but that business is gone. I’m not suggesting that you stop investing in relationships. I’m suggesting that keep the product first and relationships second.

I recently bought a used iPhone 5 on the SF Bay craigslist. I wanted it to be unlocked so that I could use it in India. I could not find a checklist of things to test online so here’s my list. Hopefully it will help your buying experience easier.

General guidance

Only search for factory unlocked phones. Buying locked phones and hoping you will be able to unlock them somehow just leads to stress and early death.

Reject low ball and high ball offers. As of today $450 seems like a reasonable after market price for a phone is reasonably good condition

Prefer postings that have photos so that you are not surprised by the appearance of the phone at the meet.

Meet in a public place, preferably an ATT or Verizon store so that you can get the phone working at the store before you buy. This guidance is only for folks that have a US number.

Checklist

Ensure that the phone is under warranty before you buy. This will save you a lot of hassle in case anything goes wrong. The phone I bought had a bad power off/sleep button. I found this out after the transaction was over. Luckily the phone was under warranty and apple gave me a brand new unit 🙂 So… the warranty is really valuable!

Ask the seller to send you the warranty status by sending you a screenshot from this page: https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do

You should also ensure warranty status by going to: https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do and entering the device serial number yourself. You can find the serial number by going to Settings->General->About.

Check the phone is unlocked and that its IMEI number is not blocked. This ensures that the phone is not stolen by going to atleast two sites and confirming the status is the same on both. You can find the IMEI number by going to Settings->General->About. Here are the sites I used:

http://iphoneox.com

http://www.imei.info

Try to have your “nano sim” ready so that you can test it in the new phone. The iPhone 4S sim is a micro SIM and it will not work in the iPhone 5

Check the phone for defects by:

Making a call

Test the speaker during the call

Test the headphones

Test the mic if its built in to the headphones by voice the “Voice memo” app under utilities

Test the home button works

Test that the lock/sleep/switch off button works

Test that the charging cable works. This was not working for me and I was able to get $20 back from the seller. There are lots of “lightening” cables that are not legit. So, do check this before you buy.